Once again, as he did with Russ George, Steve Krivit has done a credible job delving into the background of a person related to cold fusion. This field certainly does attract strange people! However, we need all the help we can get, and I welcome the oddballs. Macy's resume may be somewhat inflated and her background may be a tad unseemly, but I do not think that matters. Two reasons:
First, she can do no harm. Nothing that anyone can say or do could possibly make this field more disreputable than it already is. We are already the targets of as much derision and hate as the prostitutes Macy worked with previously; we have no reputation to defend or worry about. An enlightened person never worries about his social reputation in any case. Second, if she does a good job interviewing people and preserving data, that will be helpful and her background will be irrelevant. Or, if she does a bad job, no one will pay any attention, and her background will be ignored. I do have one reservation about Macy. Given her background working with prostitutes, she might be better qualified to interview plasma fusion researchers than our crowd. On a more serious note, Krivit mentioned a possible sexual relationship. This is uncalled for. It is even more uncalled for in the early 21st century than it was at the height of the Victorian era, for opposite reasons: back then it hurt the reputation of the person in the relationship, but nowadays it reflects badly on the person reporting the news, because most of us think this is none of our damn business. Actually, most wealthy and upper class people back in Victorian era felt the same way, and they were more discrete about these things than you might think from watching "Masterpiece Theater." I used to know many people raised in the late 19th and early 20th century, and most of them struck me as more knowledgeable, sensible, broadminded and discrete about sex than modern people are. The Lewinsky scandal would have been unthinkable in earlier times, even though the presidents such as JFK and FDR had far more expansive sex lives than Clinton ever did. In those days people, especially reporters and politicians, knew how to mind their own business and keep quiet. - Jed
